New Harvest CEO Demystifies the World of “Lab-Grown Meat” in Reddit AMA

“Our focus is building meat that is identical [to traditional meat] at the cellular/molecular level,” Isha Datar writes. “The product isn’t an alternative. What is alternative is how it got to your plate.”

Datar is the CEO of New Harvest, a nonprofit devoted to “accelerating breakthroughs in cellular agriculture,” or essentially creating a viable “lab-grown meat” that doesn’t rely on traditional factory farming methods.

On Thursday, Datar and two coworkers—intern Daan Luining and chief development officer Gilonne d’Origny—held an Ask Us Anything session on Reddit to clear up common misconceptions about the burgeoning field of synthetic meat research.

As they took turns tackling users’ questions, they explained the latest advances in cellular ag technology and offered their thoughts on whether cultured meat can be considered safe, vegan, kosher, or tasty.

So if Taco Bell is your idea of thinking outside the bun, you might want to brace yourself.

Can Synthetic Meat Compete?

When (the appropriately usernamed) redditor SoNowWhat asked how the tech behind cultured meat stacks up against the prevailing system of factory farms, the folks at New Harvest were pragmatic about their future:

To read all of New Harvest’s answers to redditors’ questions, check out the original AMA discussion. The nonprofit is holding “the world’s first conference dedicated to breakthroughs in cellular agriculture” this July in San Francisco, Calif.